He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls. (Proverbs 25:28)
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Pope Francis.
The Vatican City’s old wall.
A sign they’re not Christians at all?
For the Pope said as much
about Trump, walls and such.
Humpty Dumpty did fall, I recall.
The moral of this story: Be careful not to make off the wall remarks.
Joking aside, I took a look at how many times the word wall was used in the Bible and where it was used. There are so many tidbits we can learn from a word study. The first is in Leviticus 25: 29-31 ‘Likewise, if a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, then his redemption right remains valid until a full year from its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year. But if it is not bought back for him within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently to its purchaser throughout his generations; it does not revert in the jubilee. The houses of the villages, however, which have no surrounding wall shall be considered as open fields; they have redemption rights and revert in the jubilee.
This is old Mosaic law, and gives clear guidance that the law in a protected place with borders is different from the law in places without borders, and property rights are clearly established. As a civil society we no longer follow Mosaic Law, that would be as ridiculous as if anyone demanded we should follow Sharia Law.
Moving on, there are the walls of Jericho, the wall of Jerusalem, Nehemiah rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem and the watchmen on the wall.
Then in the New Testament walls are not mentioned at all in the Gospels (In the parable of the tenants in Matthew and Mark it is literally a hedge, not a wall) and only Revelation describes the walls of the new Jerusalem. So the Pope is right, building walls does not appear in the Gospels. Neither does the word bridge appear anywhere in the Bible, so that part is extra-biblical, if one is to take his admonition literally. So if Sarah Palin as Governor refused to build “the bridge to nowhere”, does that make her a non-Christian? (A Limerick from way back comes back to memory)
Sarah Palin did not even think of Nantucket
when plans for that infamous bridge kicked the bucket.
But profligate waste
and spending with haste:
She ordered the spendthriftest Congress to chuck it!
Joking aside, the Pope probably meant spiritual walls and bridges, but by saying it right near the U.S. Mexican border it is easy to assume he meant a literal border. If so, where is the literal bridge?
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Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 